Question:
Hi I am new here, but I have a question maybe some of you can help me with. I had a year and half old female tortouise (sp) shell kitty. She got pregnant and had a litter of 6 males...yes 6 males...Labor went real good and had all healthy babies. Shortly after she had the kittens her weight went drastically down...she was a small kitty anyways but I thought this was normal, as she had just had so many kittens. She mainted her weight finally and after weaning the babies she just wasn't gaining much weight just maintaining. About 2 weeks ago she left and was gone almost a week and a half till last monday. When the girls found her she was immaciated, was having a hard time breathing but wouldn't eat anything, trust me i basically opened up the fridge and cabinets and offered everything....I called the vet and had an appointment scheduled with him at 8 tuesday morning. But when i went to find her she was missing, we couln't find her anywhere so i figured she must have gotten out side somehow. Thursday afternoon came and my youngest only 3 came and told me one of the kittens was in her dresser and she was really cold, I went running in there to find my mommy kitty dead in the dresser and no she wasn't locked in there. She pulled out all of the clothes and looked as though she just went to sleep....sad day at my house let me tell you...anyways some of her other symptoms were her hair color changed to really light like almost sunbleached,
does anyone have any clues on this unfortunately i didn't have the money to do an autopsy on her.

Answer:
This is very sad. She probably died of starvation but there was underlying disease, maybe cancer. She suffered a great deal before 'going to sleep', I'll tell you that.

There are so many points during this story where the evidence was in front of your eyes - beginning with her rapid weight loss following the birth of her kittens - and you did not act. Why? Why were you not running to the vet? If you didn't have the money to autopsy her I guess you didn't have the money to relieve her pain. If you have no money for these kinds of emergencies, I suggest you shouldn't have pets at all.

You are very brave to post this because frankly you don't come off smelling like a rose. I hope many people will read it, so they can witness, as it were, the suffering of this poor cat who came back to you TWICE, looking for help, and was rejected.

And will people finally get it through their skulls -
RAPID WEIGHT LOSS IS ALWAYS A PROBLEM. THEY ARE NOT DIET-ING, BUT THEY MAY BE DIE-ING. GET IT??

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ok first of all she went to the vet right before she took off the first time she spent two days there while they tested her, they was a high white count and they gave iv antibiotics and then told me to bring her back in two weeks if she didn't get better. but they found nothing at the time. And when she came back to me the second time i did call the vet and made an appointment for the early morning which by hand was only 5 hours after she came in the house. so please don't ridicule me or whatever... brave if thats what you want to call it, i guess the real judgement comes from the fact that I came to people like you to help me from one cat lover to another...I am sorry I don't have hundreds of dollars to treat my cat the way you might, but I tried and what they tested her for they couldn't find anything.

Answer:
Weight loss is a huge problem in pregnant and nursing mother cats. She may not have had a disease, she could have just been sick with something such as a cold, but she was obviously malnourished and it probably took everything out of her to nurse the kittens. Mother cats need to be on a nice rich diet of high quality or at least high protein food in order to nurse their babies and stay healthy. It probably put so much strain on her to have improper nutrition and lose weight while nursing, that her immune system was compromised and she was struck with a more serious illness. I'm betting she ended up dehydrated also, which lead to her demise.

Mother cats should always been taken to the vet while they're pregnant for check ups, and then they should be looked at by the vet soon after they have their kittens to make sure they're in good health ESPECIALLY if you do not have experience with pregnant cats, which you obviously didn't since all the signs pointed to her being in dire need of medical attention. They also need to be fed a proper diet of high quality canned food, or at the least a mix of canned and hard, and be kept in a low stress situation. That means INDOORS and away from animals and people that could bother her.

There's also a chance she was unknowingly in poor health to begin with and having kittens didn't help. There's a chance that nothing could have been done for her, but who knows at this point.

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Perhaps a second opinion was inorder??!?!?
Myself, I wouldnt just let it be an " I dont know whats wrong" answer.

None the less the kitty is at peace now.
Her suffering is over and I have to say you will get a hard time on here about this situation. It was unneccisary suffering regardless of what angle you look at it from.

How old are the kittens??? Are they eating on their own now? I hope so and I hope they all find forever homes, where they are spayed/ neutered.

I hope this makes people think twice about a pet.

Answer:
She went to the vet actually before giving birth 5 days in fact, because she was so big we wanted to make sure she could have the babies.
She got a clean bill of health, also she was fed canned food with vitamins from the vet after the babies were born. Man all i wanted to do was get some support what kind of slaughter is this to start jumpin at me why not ask questions first please...all I wanted was some awnser i didn't get Im sorry if I did something wrong but she went to the vet I did what I thought I needed to do...be supportive please,

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I personally paid for getting all the kittens neutered when i gave them away I had an account set up and the people who got the kittens, just took the kittens to the vet and had it done on my expense. The kittens were never unhealthy.

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I'm sorry if I didn't sound supportive, I wasn't there with you, so for all I know you did everything possible.
It could have been the vet's mistake too, sometimes my vet takes the "oh, we'll wait and see what happens" stance too, but I always prod him until he does more tests and stuff. She could have also died because of something completely unrelated to the weight loss and other stuff, considering she was outside for a certain amount of time.

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I'm interested why you didn't mention the vet immediately? A strange omission.

Of course that changes everything. I'm sorry your vet wasn't more interested in your case, because when you took the cat to the vet a second time, and she was so much thinner, - if I'm following the chronology correctly - red lights and sirens should have gone off. Your vet let you down, and you let your cat down, by not keeping her inside and by not seeing how dangerously ill she was and pushing for more answers.

No-one here can diagnose her for you. We're not vets and starvation is the end-stage of many diseases.

Answer:
well for one when i posted this i did it wrong 2 times and didn't post right so i had to rewrite the darn thing. for second I was just trying to see if anyone else had the same problem.
when she went to the vet right before leaving she wasn real skinny then just wasn't completly back to her pre pregnancy weight he told me it was probably because of so many kittens (incidently we helped feed kittens because of this) that her weight because of her overall size wasn't that alarming, and that the vitamins along with the antibiotic and food basically laid out to her is all she needed. All the test except the white count came out good. (heart worm, feline leukemia and worms) On the subject of her getting out, I have a 2 and 4 year old daughter who adored this cat and who also knew how to open her carrier, so it was a battle to keep them from letting her out.

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here is a picture of her and her babies

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Sorry for your loss, she was a beautiful kitty. If you ever get another female cat please get her spayed before she can go into heat.

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kudos to you for having all the kittens neutered at your expense before you placed them in good homes. if only all cat owers were as caring as you are! poor momma cat... a harsh lesson for everyone, but i hope it was a lesson that you will share with everyone you know so other poor cats don't end up with the same fate. thanks for posting your story here

Answer:
About 2 weeks ago she left and was gone almost a week and a half till last monday.
During that time she was missing she may have gotten herself locked up in a shed without food and water, in which case her kidneys could have simply shut down,

WBC being high could indicate infection, possibly some of the afterbirth or a dead undeveloped fetus was not expelled


these are possible guesses but that is all anyone can give you.

Sorry for your loss

Answer:
Originally Posted by lotsofmantra
When the girls found her she was immaciated, was having a hard time breathing but wouldn't eat anything, trust me i basically opened up the fridge and cabinets and offered everything....I called the vet and had an appointment scheduled with him at 8 tuesday morning.

At this point the poor kitty should have been rushed to the nearest all hours emergency clinic.

It sounds like a combination of your lack of experience and the vet not doing enough. A high white blood cell count could have been indicating an infection or disease. I also feel very strongly against young children playing with or near a pregnant kitty, it's not a good idea for many reasons. I also made the mistake of not getting one of my cats to the vet years ago and he wandered off. I still carry a tremendous amount of guilt for not helping him when he clearly needed it. There were many reasons that contributed to the poor decision but there was no excuse. I'm sorry you had to go through this, it's a very difficult learning experience. Like technodol said it's something you can learn from to help other kitty's avoid this not so uncommon fate.

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I've seen the weight loss/breathing difficulty combination in a cat with pneumonia. Could have been that. I'm glad you had the kittens fixed, good for you! But I wish that poor girl hadn't had to go through this.

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At some point, explaining to your children that it wasn't their fault may be a good idea as well. They really shouldn't have had the opportunity to let her out and it must have been confusing and possibly traumatizing for your daughter to find the cat. It can also effect children very deeply to see animals suffering. Looking into some ways of helping them cope with what happened might be a good idea, if you haven't already. This link looked like it had some good suggestions, but your library ought to have or order something better for you, if you are interested.
http://www.cvm.uiuc.edu/petcolumns/s...cle.cfm?id=112

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